h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"With no disrespect intended (I don't know how you react yourself), but they are also, unfortunately, usually the most angry and [religious] about their conviction that God doesn't exist and/or that Christianity is wrong (depending usually on whether the person has gone out for fully fledged [athiesm], or decided to find another [religious] order)."

I've met -- and dated -- people on both sides of that; it definitely (sp?) depends on a given person's temperament. However, most former Christians I've met are actually quite mature about it and have well-thought-out arguments against the religion and get describe them to others with little passion and more matter-of-factness. I've only met one angry former Christian (I'd go so far as to call her an anti-Christian), but several of my friends know incredibly passionate, zealotous Christians that will defend their religion to the death.

"Although I don't think it has always been that way. I think it was something that changed in the middle ages."

It was a change for the Pope; before then there were actually papal dynasties and somebody said, "that's not right".

Priests routinely married until the 1300's in both the Roman Catholic and Orthodox church. The Roman Catholic church became less tolerant after about 900.

Bishop Thos. Cranmer (Archbishop of Canterbury under Rome and then Henry VIII) was married both before and after the CoE split from Rome (the whole thing was messy).

The Orthodox churches argue that Bishops must be celibate but not priests. If you are a priest and have ambitions of becoming a bishop then you must stay single. As a result Orthodox bishops are often (ex-)monks.

I do not think that Peter hated women - he was married and kept on popping away from the main group to go home. As for Jesus, there is a reasonable amount of evidence that he lived with Peter and Peter's wife for much of the time he was teaching. There is not a lot of evidence that Jesus had problems with women. It is true that the only recorded debate that he lost was with the Samaritan woman at the well!

One wonders what the writers of the Gospels were up to when they let that one slip through!

There's evidence in the Gospels (far from conclusive, of course) to suggest that Jesus was a married man himself, and that the wedding at Cana (?sp) where the first miracle occurred was his own.

Not saying I necessarily believe it myself, or even think it's that important either way, but... If Jesus did lead the model, exemplar life God expects Christians to aspire to, and he never showed any signs of, ahem, romantic interest in anyone he ever met, what are the implications for the faithful? How do you square this? Does God expect all Christians to be celibate too?

(Hand grenade in the pond time again. Merry Christmas everyone, and sorry...)

I shouldn't think God expects universal celibacy. It is hardly auspicous to begin one's religious ministry by celebrating the nuptials of family friends (Jesus' mum was there too) with twelve mysteriously sourced jars of Chateau Nazareth '27 if you are trying to send a message of:

1) don't drink,
2) don't have sex, and
3) don't go to parties.

Of course, it does for the host to keep mystical numbers of large storage containers nearby in case of catering miracles (needed also for fish/loaves).

As a card carrying Christian, I would like to recommend a Christmas of nuptual nookie, good drink and big parties to everyone. I am off to lunch for the next week or two (probably for much of the time, a long perpetual mid-afternoon lunch on the beach, so enjoy the cold you northern hemisphere types!).

In the Old Testamant (probably exodus or the one after) it mentions that people who are married are practically required to have sex (on both sides, not just that the women should do what the men want). So celibacy presumably not a big requirement.

I think the authors of the Gospels wrote down what they thought was relevant, constrained by what they knew/remembered/were reliably told. Slight differences don't mean they contradict, surely you've had conversations before where you thought someone said one thing when they actually said something else, or have misremembered whether a conversation took place on Saturday or Thursday (etc).

Jesus was probably too busy to get involved with women in a romantic way. Plus it would have made him reluctant to leave. No reason why other people shouldn't, otherwise there's issues with the continuing survival of the human race.

Well, I don't wish to appear unduly argumentative, but the differences between the Gospels, whilst not exactly fundamental, are a bit more than slight.

Anyway, how come Jesus was especially busy prior to his career as a spiritual leader? There's nothing in the Bible to suggest he was anything other than an ordinary carpenter between the ages of 15 and 30 (which was very nearly middle-aged by the standards of the day).

There's no reason that god has to do stuff that makes sense to us.

Are you saying there's big differences just because you've heard it, or have you actually looked and investigated and stuff?

There is if He's going to say 'this is the ideal, virtuous life' and expect us, as rational beings, to do likewise.

Oooh... thinking back to A-level RE, many many years past... yeah, just lots of stuff. When Jesus' first visit to Jerusalem was and how often he visited it, that kind of thing. I'd have to dig to give you a list of examples. It was explained to us as reflecting the audience which each Gospel was aimed at - Mark being your basic 'vanilla' gospel, Luke being pitched more at Gentiles, Matthew pitched at Jews, John (written much later) as more a piece of allegorical literature. (May have got the target audiences mixed up there.)

I don't see errors/omissions in any text as being a problem. All texts are riddled with them - sometimes it is harder to see them in a modern text because we share many of the same assumptions as the author.

The problem of the nature of God is addressed unambiguously in the Gospels far better than the question of God's relationship with Jerusalem.

If God is Jesus, is the God that people think of the sort of God is would behave like Jesus? The answer to that is (in general) "no". People (still) like a Gandalf image of God: and this is not compatible with how the Gospel writers experienced living with God as they lived with Jesus.

This leaves unanswered the questions of what does it mean to talk to God and where is God when you talk.

"If God is Jesus, is the God that people think of the sort of God is would behave like Jesus?"

I do write some rubbish, don't I?

Maybe...

If God is Jesus, is the God that most people naturally think of, the sort of God that behaves like Jesus?